DORNEY, England - Christine Lofgren anxiously made her way through the crowd that had gathered following the Olympic women’s eight rowing final, weaving through the Union Jacks, and the Australians in green and gold, the Dutch with their orange afro wigs and cowboy hats. Lofgren was searching, to avail, for her daughter Esther, a member of the U.S. eight boat.

Finally Esther Lofgren emerged on a path leading from the Dorney Lake dock, an American flag draped around her shoulders, a gold medal around her neck. The two women embraced, Esther on the verge of sobbing. And then she placed into her mother’s hands the gold medal that had eluded the family for more than a quarter-century.

“Whoa,” Christine said, “it’s heavy.”

Only these two resilient women, mother and daughter, could truly appreciate the hard journey it had taken to finally lift Olympic gold on a sunny afternoon in the English countryside Thursday; the completion of a family odyssey stretching across parts of five decades marked by heartbreak, pain and sacrifice, but, above all, an unyielding determination.

Christine Lofgren, now a professor of cognitive science at UC Irvine, was cut from the U.S. eight boat shortly before the 1984 Olympic Games, a wound that Esther drove herself to close only to suffer a similar fate before the 2008 Games. Four years ago, she watched the U.S. women win the Olympic eight final in tears while staying with a friend in Berkeley.

Lofgren was in tears again Thursday afternoon, overwhelmed by the emotions of the moment and the winding path that led to it, as she stood with her U.S. teammates on the Olympic medal stand, proof positive that she was every bit her mother’s daughter.

“My mom was the last person cut from the 1984 Olympic team, so it’s been a dream since I was a little to go the Olympics,” said Lofgren, a Newport Harbor High and Harvard graduate, unable to hold back tears. “I took a year off from school to try out for Beijing in 2008 and I was the last one cut from this boat. So to be here racing is just so special and it just means so much to me.”

Even after helping the U.S. eight win the 2011 World Championships and set a world best time earlier this season, there were still moments this year when Lofgren did not feel assured of a seat in the boat for London.

“You never know you’re going to be in this boat until sitting out there at the starting line of the Olympics and then you know and you race,” she said.

Lofgren was there in the No. 3 seat when the horn blew for the start of the 2,000-meter final Thursday. The Netherlands jumped out to an early lead but by the first split at 500 meters the U.S. led by a second. The gap was 2.24 seconds on second-place Canada by the halfway point and when it remained over two seconds at 1,500 the only question was by how much was Team USA going to defend its gold medal from Beijing.

The U.S. finished in 6 minutes, 10.59 seconds, a time that reflected the course’s choppy water. Canada took the silver medal at 6:12.06 with the Netherlands holding on for the bronze in 6:13.12. The victory extended an American unbeaten string dating back to 2005 and includes three World championships and two Olympics.

“That is an American dynasty, baby,” said Zsuzsanna Francia, the U.S. No. 2.

Hopes of being part of similar international success is what led Karl Lofgren and his wife Christine to leave Massachusetts for Southern California in 1976 shortly after they graduated from MIT. They both had job offers from all over the country but settled on engineering spots with Rockwell, believing Long Beach was the best location to pursue their rowing dreams. So they loaded everything they owned into their 1969 white Chevy Impala and headed west. They made it as far as Illinois before the Impala gave out. Karl’s father helped them purchase a Torino for the rest of the trip.

“Not a Gran Torino,” Christine said.

They worked out at the Rockwell gym during their lunch hours, rowed before work, worked out after their jobs.

“We were usually in bed by eight or nine,” Christine recalled. “That was our life until ’84 Olympic Trials when I didn’t make the team and then we moved on to having a family.

“I was disappointed but you accept it and you move on and maybe in some ways it’s easier if you’re married and you’ve kind of settled down.”

She went back to school, earning a doctorate at UCI. “I had other directions to go,” Christine said.

In February 1985, Esther was born.

“I rowed all the way through my pregnancy and I tried to be very smooth so if there was any possible imprinting,” Christine said laughing.

The Lofgrens, however, did not push Esther into rowing. She played volleyball and basketball at Newport Harbor where she was a teammate of another future Olympian, beach volleyball player April Ross.

“I have about a 4-inch vertical (jump) so it was not meant to be,” Esther said of her volleyball career.

She initially took up rowing only as part of an off-season conditioning regime. “And I just fell in love with the sport,” Lofgren said.

Lofgren was an All-American at Harvard before taking a year off from school in 2008 to focus on making the Olympic team. She was on track for Beijing only to be the last rower cut before the Games, a blow all too familiar to the family.

“These are the girls I trained with day in and day out and I couldn’t have been prouder and happier for them,” Lofgren referring to the U.S. eight’s victory in Beijing. “But it’s just about the worst feeling in the world not to be there.”

She finished her degree in economics at Harvard and then was again a late cut just prior to the 2009 World Championships.

“It’s been ups and downs,” Lofgren said. Unbowed she put her career on hold and eventually reversed her parents’ steps, loading up her ’98 Toyota Camry and driving across country to the USRowing Training Center at Princeton. Her parents understood.

“My parents never pushed me into it, but we certainly all respect Olympic endeavors and the idea of pushing yourself to what you can become and past your limits,” Lofgren said. “And so in that sense I really appreciate that my parents understand what we’re all doing out there.”

With her Harvard degree she could have found a job that paid six figures. Instead at different times she tutored and baby sat, worked in a sandwich shop and as a barista to supplement the $1,000 monthly stipend from USRowing. She lived with host family in Princeton but felt her spot in eight was so tenuous that she kept all her belongings packed in the Camry.

“Because I didn’t know if I was going to be good enough to be able to stick around and I just had my whole car packed,” Lofgren said.

A few weeks ago she was finally named to the Olympic team. And Thursday she was pulling down Dorney Lake, 2,000 final meters of rough water.

“There are just not any words,” Lofgren said when asked what she though the victory would mean to her mother. “It means so much to her and to both of my parents.

“They know the work and the sacrifice that goes into this. Moving to Princeton and living out of my car and living with a host family that took care of me and fed me and working these crappy odd jobs to be here to do this. Every up and down has been worth it.”

Lofgren swallowed hard as IOC member Anita DeFrantz, herself a former Olympic rower, prepared to place the gold medal around her neck.

“For now and forever an Olympic champion,” DeFrantz told Lofgren.

Christine Lofgren was right --- the medal was heavy. But then so had been the price two women, mother and daughter, had willingly paid for it. Besides, Esther Lofgren knew it would ultimately rest in strong hands.

“I’m going to give her my medal,” she said referring to her mother. “This one’s for her.”

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